No
portion of this novel may be duplicated, transmitted, or stored in any form
without the express written permission of the author.

Warning:
The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is
illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without
monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in
federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

This
is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and locations are fictitious or
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or people is coincidental.

BooksForABuck.com

February 2012

ISBN: 978-1-60215-167-3

Olivia

Olivia Jardan’s phone chimed
and she answered without checking her display. “Talk.”

“Detective Jardan?” Police central’s standard mechanical
voice.

“Confirmed.”

“We have evidence of biometric failure by an ensured
ratepayer.” The Police Corporation’s intentionally robotic voice rattled off
the policy number, then the name of the failed individual, Hank Merryweather. “Standard
rates apply. Please accept or reject.”

As if a cop could afford to turn down jobs. “Accept.”

“Confirmation noted, detective. Assess and Avenge.”

“Assess and Avenge,” Olivia echoed before signing off.

Biometric failure could mean anything from a split
fingernail to the outbreak of some designer-plague. Regardless, the number
indicated that Merryweather was a centercity ratepayer. All ratepayers demanded
instant response, but centercity ratepayers were the worst.

Olivia checked her police tunic to be sure it was fully charged,
then headed to the rail.

As she trotted toward the station, she double-checked
Merryweather’s failure location on her phone. He’d apparently suffered the
failure at his place of residence in centercity. Unfortunately, he lived a fair
distance from the nearest rail. Which meant delay or expense.

The train arrived just as she did so she boarded before
calling Merryweather. Woe to any detective brash enough to call a ratepayer
without being able to promise they were en route to a summons. If the ratepayer
didn’t tear them a new one, police central would.

Merryweather’s automated response system refused to put her
through even with her police override code. Which wouldn’t have been odd under
normal circumstances—ratepayers didn’t go out of their way to respond to
low-status cops. Still, with a declared biometric failure, Merryweather should
answer if he could.

Trying not to think about the cost, which would be
subtracted straight from her completion bonus, she requested a system override.
Perhaps she could break through Merryweather’s phone’s blocking software even
if he were intentionally offline.

The override worked—sort of. The phone block went away, but
Merryweather still didn’t answer. So she sat back in her seat and tried to
catch up on routine police work.

An old man got on at the Richardson Center stop and claimed
the seat next to her despite the largely empty train.

She considered moving, but realized he wouldn’t be on for
long. No mere citizen could go into centercity.

On a long shot, she scanned her seatmate, noting three
violations, none coded for anything violent. Which meant no bonus for Olivia.
She went back to her ever-present voice codes.

The stranger studied her, apparently unwilling to let her
mind her own business. He must finally have realized she wasn’t going to
initiate a conversation, because he finally spoke in a croaking whisper. “Never
stop to admire the scenery, do you?”

She turned down her phone’s video display, projected
directly onto her optic nerve, so she could study the elderly citizen.

She tried to remember the last time she’d seen anyone with
thinning white hair, epidermal blemishes, or decayed musculature. She’d seen
old video, of course, but nothing like this in real life. Even a premium system
flush didn’t cost much and the Interfaith offered a flush almost as good for
free—if you didn’t mind sitting through a few sermons.

“I’m a police detective going about authorized business. I’m
not a—” she subvocalized, looking for the word, and got the answer from Google.
“—not a tourist.”

Olivia waved a hand at the small windows where transparent
cells were cut into the rail car’s solar-panel-walls. “What would I look at? Miles
of solar panels? Infrared heat release? You know just about everyone is sitting
quietly in their homespace, plugged into the Infoweb or the Interfaith, not
doing anything and not making trouble?”

The old man seemed nonplussed. “But—”

“Dallas looks like every other corporate city in America—nothing
but solar panels as far as I can see. Seen one, seen them all.”

He turned, looked out the window as if actually looking for
the first time, then shook his head slowly. “I’m sure that’s not right.”

Sure enough, his credit balances registered near zero. She
hoped he wasn’t scamming the rail because the robots monitoring payment were
programmed to deal out harsh penalties.

“It’s on me. So’s your ticket.” Olivia selected his code,
transferred the cash, and gave the transaction her biometric okay. Like
everyone, Roberts already had the scrub nanobes inside of him. The payment
would activate them, let them do their job.

It would take at least twenty-four hours to complete the
flush, but he’d start feeling better in minutes.

Olivia hated to think that anyone was wandering around
Dallas looking that old. It wasn’t as if they were back in the twentieth
century. Still, it was annoying that he hadn’t gone to the Interfaith for the
free scrub. It wasn’t as if she had a lot left over at the end of each month.

The old guy got off the rail at Midway, just as the tracks
crossed the old Interstate that created the centercity border.

She could practically feel the scans as she went through
that largely invisible, but very definite barrier. As a cop, she was a nominal
ratepayer. Even so, she could only enter centercity, the heart of the corporate
city, on business. The Merryweather project code meant not having to answer
questions posed by polite, but cheerfully violent, security bots.

As the rail neared Mockingbird Station, Olivia checked with
central, which reported continued failure in its system override.

Merryweather’s autoanswer was less polite this time,
reminding her that she had already left her priority code and that Ratepayer
Merryweather would get back to her in his own good time.

The train slid to a smooth stop and Olivia stepped off—into
the heat of a Dallas summer.

Although her uniform wicked perspiration from her skin and
its black surface converted seventy-three percent of the sunlight into
electricity rather than heat, she still wilted. September in Dallas was plenty
of reason for anyone to huddle in the air-conditioned comfort of their
homespaces.

She considered taking a car from the station, but decided to
jog. It wouldn’t take any longer and, despite what she’d said to Citizen
Roberts, it might help to look at the neighborhood and determine if biometric
failure had breached the bio-barriers of Merryweather’s homespace. Besides, she
didn’t want to lose money on this assignment and cars were expensive,
especially in centercity.

Reflecting the wealth of the ratepayers in this part of the
city, the homespaces were larger than those in outer rings, with glistening
solar panels maintained by armies of tiny cleaning bots. A thousand tiny hums
indicated that the houses were active, sucking water vapor and carbon from the
air. Other than the size, they were little different from houses on the other
side of the barrier. What shocked her were the trees: huge biological trees,
their leaf canopies soaking up water and carbon that could be used in
construction, and blocking direct sunlight from reaching solar panels.

Olivia had seen plenty of conspicuous consumption in the
four years she’d served as a cop, but she’d never seen anything like this. Of
course, most police jobs involved citizens rather than ratepayers and the rings
rather than centercity. She’d been downtown several times, but this was her
first trip to the residential segments of centercity.

Considering her problems with the autoanswer, she wasn’t
surprised when Merryweather’s homespace rejected her Police authorization code.
Biometric failure enabled another option. Olivia uploaded the override provided
by Merryweather’s insurance company. That got a grudging approval from the
house’s artificial intelligence. Even computers were smart enough not to mess
with insurance companies.

Before she stepped inside, Olivia stretched the fabric of
her uniform tunic over her eyes, nose, and mouth to create a biochemical
barrier. Biological accidents and attacks were unusual, but they weren’t
unknown.

The second she saw Merryweather, though, she knew that no
weird toxin or bioengineered bacteria had created the bio-failure. Failure came
from cranial trauma and loss of blood.

Olivia reached for the large man’s wrist and felt for a
pulse while her sensors attempted to contact Merryweather’s implants and
determine if anything remained system-operational.

It took her fifteen seconds to reach the obvious conclusion.
Hank Merryweather was terminally dead. From the blood spatter and the deep
bloody gouge carved in his forehead by something heavy and sharp, he hadn’t met
with an accident. Ratepayer Merryweather had been murdered.

The Avenge half of the Police Corporation motto, “Assess and
Avenge,” went into immediate effect. As the detective assigned the case, Olivia
would track down those who had killed Merryweather and ensure that they paid
the price for their behavior.

She confirmed that her phone had uploaded the biometric
detail to police central and verified that her account had been credited with
both a completion fee (discounted for a supposed delay). A credit had also been
applied for the murder investigation—a disappointingly small credit.

Unluckily for Merryweather, but luckily for Olivia’s bank
account, his biometric failure had turned into a two-fer.

Looking for evidence rather than cause of death, Olivia
checked the victim more carefully.

She’d seen death before, but only among cits. Ratepayers
were supposed to be beyond that. Not that they were immortal, but crass violent
death just wasn’t a part of what the sims showed of their world. She couldn’t
help being sickened by the contrast between Merryweather’s obvious wealth, and
the violence of his death.

His homespace controller displayed more bad news. Merryweather’s
file system had been plundered.

Olivia connected to central and dictated her preliminary
report. “Ratepayer Hank Merryweather is dead due to trauma to the brain. A
sharp heavy object, such as an ax, believed to be the weapon used. Such weapon
was not, confirm not, found on location. Multiple files have been
removed from Merryweather’s computer. Some of these appear to be unsigned
creations. I am unable to ascertain the purpose of the unsigned codes.”

“Assessment?” the robotic voice demanded.

The assessment was obvious. Stolen code, especially naked
code lacking digital rights management overlays that limited their use, could
rocket a citizen into the kind of wealth that would make him an Infoweb
celebrity.

“Somebody plans on living high off of Merryweather’s
intellectual property.”

“Report accepted,” the computer at central relied after an
infinitesimal delay. “Assess and Avenge.”

“Assessing and Avenging,” Olivia promised.

Julia

Julia Turnboldt didn’t need
to check the time—her phone projected it directly onto her optical nerves. She
did it anyway. Merryweather was late. Again.

Free-code was supposed to be a good time, not to mention an
opportunity to meet guys her mother considered suitable. Well, her mother might
consider them suitable, but Julia found everyone she’d met so far impossibly
dull and sometimes not too bright. The one exception, Hank Merryweather, was too
caught up in his causes to be interesting. Still, he was one hell of a coder.
Julia had learned a lot from him—when
he bothered showing up for his appointments.

She exhaled, pasted on a smile, then called him.

Instead of Merryweather’s autoanswer, the logo of one of the
big insurance companies filled her optical system. “Final benefits for
Ratepayer Hank Merryweather are now being processed. If you have financial
claims on his estate, you must file these claims within three days. Do you wish
to leave a message?”

Final benefits? Merryweather wasn’t even fifty. Sure
that seemed old to Julia, but a ratepayer could expect to live to at least a
hundred and fifty before body scrubs began to fail.

A chill trickled through her. Merryweather wasn’t just late
for their meeting, he was terminally late. She’d never get the chance to
explain her most recent project to him, make him eat his flippant dismissal of
what she knew was solid code. She’d never learn more of the sneaky tricks he
used to cut the components he used down to the bare minimum, meaning that his
code was not only clean but offered higher profit margins than anything the big
shops turned out.

She crushed the carbon-fiber cup that had held her latte,
dropped it into a public constructor for reshaping, and headed back to her
office. Without Merryweather’s help, she’d be working late for the next couple
of nights.

Olivia

Olivia tried to organize the data
pouring out of Merryweather’s homespace controller.

“Number and codes of anyone entering the homespace in the
four hours between Merryweather’s last access and reported biometric failure,”
she demanded.

Five individuals had entered, although Merryweather had
authorized only the first. The fifth was herself, which left three unaccounted
for. Apparently those others had been manually admitted. That wasn’t a contract
violation, but it was unusual. If Merryweather hadn’t been a centercity
ratepayer, his insurance company might have fought payout due to that
irregularity.

Olivia checked for fingerprints on Merryweather’s fully
stocked constructor, found none, and used it to fabricate a forensic scanner.

As she’d suspected, the scanner indicated massive trauma to
Merryweather’s skull. Mixed with the shattered bone, sub-molecular flakes of
buckyball carbon suggested that a constructed device had been used in the
murder. Her initial theory of an ax attack was holding up well.

She added the detector’s information to the readouts from
Merryweather’s biosensors. Together, they formed a complete autopsy report.

Her credit balance clicked up slightly, but only very
slightly. The price of the scanner had been deducted from her fee.

She shook her head. She was done here. All that remained was
to track down the killers, avenge Merryweather’s death, and report back to central.

She grabbed Merryweather’s arms to drag his remains to the
constructor for recycling but an alarm flashed from her phone. “Ratepayer
Merryweather has requested specific biological handling.”

Right. Real ratepayers weren’t bound by the rules ordinary people
had to labor under. She dropped his arm and summoned the body disposal team.
She wouldn’t get paid for the wait, but at least the insurance company would
pay for the disposal.

She used the delay to log into central’s database and track
down the homespace locations of the killers. Motive and means were obvious.
Citizens clearly wanted the kind of code a first-class designer like
Merryweather would stock. That gave them motive. And they’d constructed a
carbon buckyball ax to do the job. That was the means. When she found them, she’d
have to determine how they’d gotten into centercity. After all, centercity
existed to keep citizens out and ratepayers safe. Someone higher up in police
corporation security was going to be answering some tough questions.

That, though, was no skin off her nose. She’d find the facts
and see if she could end her day financially ahead of yesterday.

The body disposal team arrived shortly after she’d
discovered the killers’ locations and she turned the corpse over to them and
headed back to the rail, catching the train to the outer rings.

She dictated her tentative conclusions and next steps as the
train floated out of centercity.

“Data is consistent with your conclusions,” central admitted
reluctantly. “Do you wish backup for the apprehension? There will be a
twenty-five percent fee waiver given the number of alleged assailants.”

Not happening. Even with the partial waiver, bringing in
hired help would drain her balance quickly, leaving her hanging if everything
didn’t go well. Besides, if she couldn’t handle a few lowlife cits from the
outer rings, she needed retraining.

The outer rings looked pretty much like centercity or her
third-level ring. Acres of solar panels pointed hopefully toward the sky. A few
narrow nanobe-implanted roads, and the occasional remnant of twentieth century
architecture-inorganic materials too expensive to reclaim but too impractical
to actually use, marred otherwise straight lines of mirrored panels.

There were no trees out here, of course. Sunlight, carbon
and water were basic feedstocks for both trees and people. The resources sucked
up by the small forest in centercity could have fed, clothed and sheltered
thousands of citizens.

Figuring that the killers might be enjoying the fruits of
their raid, Olivia headed toward the apartment two of Merryweather’s last
visitors had shared.

It was a dusty little place, which didn’t make a lot of
sense since dust interferes with solar collection and the code for constructing
dusting robots was free, but the suspects were guys in their early twenties.
Maybe filth was a fashion statement.

She walked up to the door and input her police override, not
even bothering with a polite interrogation.

The door’s AI refused to accept her code. Which was odd. It
cost money to ignore an override, and nobody with money would live in a pit
like this.

Cops don’t get paid to give up, though. Olivia turned her
police tunic down so it was less obviously a uniform, switched her surface
codes to reflect a cit lifestyle, and smiled into the greeter, politely
requesting personal access.

“The household is accepting no visitors at this time,” the
greeter AI replied.

“Oh, that doesn’t mean me. The boys invited me over.
They said they had got some cool new codes and it was time to party.”

Sir or ma’am? A greeter so dumb it couldn’t do basic
human sex discrimination should not be able to defeat a police access request.

Olivia tore a single buckyball strand from her tunic, touched
the two ends to her tongue, and used the natural adhesion in her saliva to hang
it between the door and the frame. It wouldn’t keep anyone in, but it would let
her know if someone left.

Her makeshift detector in place, she jogged down the narrow
alleyway to one of the few open courtyards in the neighborhood.

No matter how desperate people were for space, they left
room around public constructors. Those were the last resort of citizens who’d
lost everything. Given enough time in line, a citizen could construct the solar
panels and miniconstructor that would let him or her start a new life. Code for
miniconstructors was provided as a public service by corporations who planned
to recover their investments by selling designs for final product, but most necessities
were available from the Interfaith, at the price of a few hours of
sermon-listening.

Public constructors also served wandering police officers
who needed equipment they didn’t carry in their pouches. Which is why Olivia
had noticed this one when she’d mapped the neighborhood.

She cut her way to the front of the line, let the machine
scan her ID, then selected the tube of dissolver she needed. Her account
balance dropped and she shuddered at the cost. This job would turn into a
money-loser if she wasn’t careful.

The constructor hissed a little. Two seconds later, she had
the tube of dissolver.

Equipped and ready, she returned to the apartment.

“Report change of status,” she ordered the greeter.

“I am not authorized to report to you.”

Her buckyball strand remained in place, though. If the
killers had been there when she’d arrived, they were still inside.

She plucked the strand from the door and brought it back to
her tunic, letting the self-assembling nanobes reclaim any molecules they might
need from their orphan.

That taken care of, she gave the solar panels near the door
a good soaking with the dissolver.

Like every modern homespace, this one was constructed of
solar panels. These panels were constructed using the codes the Interfaith made
available for, literally, a prayer. They weren’t designed to stand up against a
police-strength dissolver—and they didn’t.

In less than two minutes, a door-sized chunk of wall fell
in.

Unlike Merryweather, the four guys inside didn’t look
dead.

No blood trickled over the floor. No brains showed through
split skulls. No squawks from disgruntled computers complained to the world.

They looked completely happy, enraptured by their codes.

A faint spatter on one of the men’s shirts scanned blood.
That blood, her scanner said, was Merryweather’s. In the corner, an ax,
constructed from diamond-hard buckyballs, deteriorated, its purpose served.

The same could be said for the guys. No sound came from
their mouths. The slight rise and fall of their chests was absent. They were
dead. Almost certainly killed by whatever they’d stolen.

She’d entered Merryweather’s homespace with proper caution
against biological contaminants. Here, though, she’d been more concerned about
a violent objection. If whatever had killed the suspects was biological, she’d
likely killed herself, too.

* * * *

It was too late to do much but hope her expensive police
immunity, which had so far turned out to be more of an insurance company
fundraiser than a real help, would protect her.

If it wasn’t biologicals, it had probably been drugs or
psychoactive code. They’d used what they’d stolen and Merryweather had struck
back at his killers from beyond his grave.

Which created another problem. What if they’d sent the codes
elsewhere before using them? Dallas could now be filling with corpses.

“I’ll need to determine whether stolen code has been
released outside this homespace’s firewall,” Olivia reported. Wrapping up the
murder had been predictably easy, but the cleanup might be more difficult than
usual. She knew what central would pay for that job-zero. Still, it had to be
done.

To her surprise, central didn’t accept her input. “Infoweb
monitoring is in place. Return to your routine assignments.”

She blinked, then checked her phone. Amazingly, police central
implemented a 100 percent completion payment for the avenge. The general rumor
among cops was that central never calculated a job more than eighty
percent complete.

“Instructions confirmed,” she said. “Returning to stand-down
status. I will order this homespace, and the deceased, dissolved as a warning
to others. Standard policy per directive 1e728c2084.”

She grinned as she broke through the keeper’s emergency
access panel and set the homespace self-destruct code. This would take care of
the bodies as well, saving her the body disposal fee and providing a nice bit
of organic matter for the neighbors’ systems.

Control had gone quiet and she thought their conversation
was over, but it crackled back to life just as she reached to press the ‘activate’
button. “Negative on the destruction. The four are adherents to the Holy Father
segment of the Interfaith. They have special body rituals.”

Like insurance companies, you didn’t argue with the
Interfaith.

“Confirmed. Structure and bodies are left for Interfaith
disposal. Proceeding to stand-down.”

Acting on an urge and a hunch, though, she scooped the
suspects’ computer from its slot in the wall and took it with her.

Vinson

An alarm jerked Chief of
Police Harles Vinson from a 3-D sim concerning four beautiful female citizens
and a horse. He, of course, played the part of the horse. What those cits did
with their tongues and bodies was definitely something. This particular sim was
the latest thing among sophisticated ratepayers and Vinson liked to think of
himself as among their number—even
though police work, even at the highest levels, put a man just barely above a
citizen in social standing.

“What?”

“We have a code 729,” a sexy contralto reported. Being chief
of police meant he didn’t have to put up with mechanical voice ordinary cops
got.

“These four citizens were found dead by our investigating
officer, one Olivia Jardan.”

“Commendable. Found dead. I love that wording.”

“All four are coded for Interfaith Extreme Traditional
disposal.”

Vinson put his head in his hands and swallowed down the hard
knot in his stomach. “That means—”

“Chief Vinson, that means we have a code 729.”

Promotion in the Police Corporation was based more on
background than on talent, but you didn’t make it to Chief without having both.
And you didn’t remain at the top of the corporate structure if you didn’t
understand power.

One person choosing IET disposal meant nothing. But four out
of four sounded like an Interfaith Enforcement Squad. And Enforcement Squads
didn’t murder ratepayers—ever. That, more than anything, was at the core of the
Great Compromise back fifty or more years ago. With economic war about to break
out between Corporate Dallas and Corporate Houston, the last thing he needed was
a meltdown in the Compromise.

“Put me through to Reverend Ariel,” he ordered. “And head
Officer Olivia Jardan off the case. Give her some sort of plum assignment but
make damned sure she doesn’t dig any deeper into the Merryweather thing. Oh,
and before you give me Ariel, who’s Jardan’s supe?”

“That would be Sergeant Paul Shenker.”

“Connect me to him, now. And then perform a probability
analysis. I want to know why Interfaith enforcers are killing ratepayers and I
want to know now.”

“Conducting analysis,” central said.

Vinson flipped through his feeds, reluctantly switching off
the citizens and horse. He wasn’t sure human females could really do that with
a horse and had some thoughts on how he could find out. After all, nobody cared
if a few cits vanished. None of that would matter, though, if the great
compromise broke down on his watch.

NanoCorporate is available in multiple eBook formats (ePub, Kindle PRC, eReader, HTML, Adobe PDF). Click the Buy Now button to purchase the entire eNovel for only $3.99: